April 7, 2005

You have to check out the Kings of Convenience video, I’d Rather Dance With You. It is strangely wonderful in a sort of Napoleon Dynamite kind of way. I promise if you watch it all the way through, you will thank me. I’ll even make you a guarantee. If you don’t like it, then I won’t recommend it to you any more.

April 2, 2005

It seems that my readership has doubled in a very short time, which I am very pleased about. Now my mother and my wife read my little blog. It’s good that my wife has become a regular visitor, for multiple reasons. One is the previously mentioned doubling of my regular traffic. The other reason is that things which would normally annoy her have magically become funny when she reads them on my blog. This is a most unexpected but very desirable result. I think I will experiment to see if a similarly desirable result occurs with requests. I’m actually contemplating taking this a step further and maybe try to make some money out of it? I have to take is seriously though and post really valuable stuff that you will want to come back to. Hiring a professional agency to help me take care of a the back end also sounds tempting. I’m particularly leaning towards this site: https://www.webdesign499.com/sarasota-seo/. What do you think?

March 28, 2005

I know I’ve already posted about how much I loved London, but I’ve been going through my photos (I’m slightly click happy so there are 1600 of them) and now I like it even more. I didn’t even have to try. The one above this post looks painted, to me anyway. I didn’t have to edit it at all except for an obvious resize.

I really enjoyed photographing the city, although my greatest frustration during my trip was my malfunctioning camera. It seems to have a problem with battery life. When I say problem, I mean it. Sometimes a new set of batteries would not work at all, other times they would last maybe thirty minutes before my camera would quit. I eventually figured out that by taking them in and out and rotating them, I could squeeze out a few pictures at a time, but sometimes even that wouldn’t work though. I still managed to get quite a few though, although I spent more than I’ll admit on batteries.

I liked to think that I was observant of the world around me before I started photographing everything, but the camera makes you pay attention to the most overlooked items. Even my campus is much more interesting than I had previously thought. My friends have started teasing me because of the weird things I take pictures of, but after seeing one of my better ones, they seem really amazed at how the plainest things can be so interesting. I think that’s cool.

Still, but this is just a random thought, what if I take this hobby seriously and find that I have true talent for it? I mean, friends have been wanting to commission me for their businesses’ promotional materials. Who knows, maybe someday I’d get to see my work featured in magazines or in one of those Miami display board rentals (or New York!). That’s a long shot for now, but anything can happen, right?

We have returned from Europe. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, London is wonderful and I must admit, I didn’t really want to come back. Anyway, I got some photos and have posted some of them, more will follow later. It’s five in the morning and I’m up because we went to bed at about 4:30 pm after we arrived home yesterday. I don’t think jet lag will be a problem though, since I can just stay up till normal time tonight and be ok.

We had a few issues getting to Russia, a few people from our group had their seats from Philladelphia to London given away will we were on the plane to Philladelphia. Apparently the handoff between American Airlines and British Air was messy. We also arrived in Moscow with six fewer bags than we started with. I was missing my guitar, but eventually we got all of it back. On the way back from London, we were all bumped up to business class which is awesome! I love British Air, I hope they buy out American. That’s all I got for now.

Posted by ryan @ 5:09 am | Comments Off

March 11, 2005

Tomorrow morning, Hope and I will be off to Russia for Spring Break! Our church is sending a team there to work with a church in Kirov. It’s been mucho stressful this week getting ready to go, mainly because I had so many assignments that had to be finished early. Maybe the lack of sleep just means I’ll sleep the whole flight and not get jet lag. I was up all night studying for an exam (I did manage to get an hour and a half of sleep) only to have it postponed. “Was I mad?” you ask. Heck no! I may have known the material, but I was pretty fried so I was just glad to be able to go home and rest. I still didn’t sleep anymore, but at least I got to veg for a while.

I know this is totally random, but another Overstock.com commercial just came on and I just have to say, I don’t get it. The lady lets her hair down and tries to say “99 percent of the time” in her most sexy voice, but I just don’t know that it’s doing anything for anyone. Maybe really geeky people are turned on by her talking about percentages, I don’t know. Anyway, It’s probably the dumbest commercial ever…if anyone could even know that.

Needless to say, this site won’t be getting much love for the next two weeks. We are going to be in Russia for a week and a half and then we are going to hang out in London for five days! I’ve never been overseas, so I’m pretty excited. Any body have suggestions for things to do in London? I’m pretty sure I won’t have too much internet access while I’m in Russia, but hopefully in England I’ll be able to check my email at least. Maybe by then, I’ll have some dandy suggestions here.

March 9, 2005

The weather is just about perfect today but I’m holed up inside. I did get to go outside while I ran errands and took a couple of shots. I decided today that there are not a whole lot of things don’t make great photos if you put them in front of a blue sky. So there ya go, my photography tip for the day.

March 7, 2005

I want you to close your eyes…yes you. Well, ok don’t close them, but imagine they are closed. Now I’m going to tell you a story…

…Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was the internet. This internet was a peaceful internet. The internet browser’s job was help browse this world wide web. All was well and the people were happy.

March 2, 2005

March 1, 2005

I’ve wanted a Mini for a while now and while I still can’t afford one, I feel more secure knowing that if I ever get one, I will know how to make sure I get a real one. Counter Counterfeit Commission will help you learn how to spot a fake too. HaHa.